An article management system for managing, in an office or a house, articles by using electronic tags is conventionally known (for example, see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2000-357251).
The article management system described in the aforementioned publication merely manages the present positions of respective articles in an office or in a room (space) of an ordinary house but does not manage by whom the respective articles have been handled.
In a life space (including not only an office and a house but also a hotel, a shop, a hospital and the like) where people actively move, however, a variety of people handle a variety of articles. Therefore, it seems that various convenience is attained by managing handling of articles by people.
As an example of the management of handling of articles, a specific person is restrained from handling a specific article. For example, in an ordinary house, it is preferred that a child is restrained from handling a medicine cabinet. Therefore, articles forbidden to be handled by children are generally put in a space where children cannot reach. But such a countermeasure is not always effective.
Also, a robot for supporting activities of a person while coexisting with the person in a life space is recently being earnestly studied and developed. Accordingly, a robot system in which a robot capable of grabbing articles is introduced into a family or the like so that the robot may move articles on behalf of a person challenged in carrying articles, such as an aged person, will be realized in the future.
When a robot is introduced into a family, however, there arises another problem. Even when a medicine cabinet is safely kept so as not to be handled by children, a child can handle the medicine cabinet by operating the robot.